Is Zen Cart right for me?

[LZiegler]

The hosting provider my client is hosted on offers a 1-click install of Zen Cart, which I've now installed on their site and I've been playing around with the demo data for a few hours now. I'm wondering now though if it isn't just going to be a lot faster and easier for me to code my own solution.

The client is a non-profit and wants a web cart to allow people to donate in various ways through their website. They'll be offering tshirts and sweatshirts, but otherwise all products are something like "Sponsor a Student with a Year of School Supplies" and such. They want all six main sponsor options displayed in a grid on one page, with a sidebar that offers the t-shirt/sweatshirt option (one price; size and type to be specified in user-input notes during the checkout process). They want all the money handled through PayPal.

Is Zen Cart total overkill for this scope of a site or is there a way I can easily pare it down to what I'd need? So far I'm rather overwhelmed with the depth of the options so any assistance is really appreciated!

~LeeAnn

[Shane78]

i would yes, and not just for the amount of features..

Oddly enough, in my case the features i require come from lots of add-ons, i doubt i use half of the built in features... but its handy to have them for future use?... better to have too much than too little...

also, it is the quickness of the help and the quality of the help from people in the forums that make ZC the top open source cart system out there!

magento is bloatware and the forums are awful as its mostly geared to paid users and while prestashop is OK, most posts are in french as it's a Paris based venture... so while the helps there its not as good as the ZC forums....

i have never been a fan of cart add-ons for CMS like Joomla, Typelite, Modx etc... im sure they are good but i'd rather use a system designed from the ground up to be what it is.. but thats just my opinion.

hope it helps a little

[LZiegler]

So is there a way to have my own web form that I have post to a zencart page that handles everything on the backend without having to create a custom template and such? That would really make this a lot easier for me. What they need is so simple, I don't need product display management, just something to handle the actual checkout process and sending it to paypal.

[dbltoe]

Zen Cart is not designed to be a back end. It WILL provide you with every feature you will need and then some.
I'd like to have a dollar for every one who said, "I just need ...."
Just the attribute features of Zen will save you MANY headaches on tee shirt orders.
Check out (sorry, site offline) for free templates that will make your "customization" much easier. Something like Mother Earth might work well for you.
Don't underestimate the power of Zen. And, above all, don't underestimate the power you will need to do the job.
Just Zen Cart's integration with PayPal Express and PayPal's custom landing page would win me over.
And... the world's greatest forum is hear to help if needed.

[LZiegler]

Thanks so much for replying so quickly everyone...I completely believe your raves about the community. :)

Honestly they just don't need that much functionality. I think I'm actually just going to nab the code from something like fatfreecart.com and call it a day. They just don't need anything more than a really bare bones shopping cart.

Of course it doesn't help that they wanted the site live on the 1st but just decided they wanted this cart functionality last week lol

If I ever do a real e-commerce site though I'm definitely coming back here!